The Arduino platform is great for prototyping. Its easy-to-use shield architecture, readily identifiable pin numbering scheme, and beginner friendly IDE and software library has created a large and loyal following. In the life of many projects, however, there comes a time when the project is to be permanently deployed. When that time comes, leaving a precious Arduino in the field is often not the best option. Instead, a specialized board with either an ATmega chip or even an ATtiny chip is the best choice.

When cost or space is a factor an ATtiny chip is an attractive alternative to the ATmega for simpler projects. Thanks to the Arduino-Tiny project, an ATtiny can be used as a drop-in replacement for most Arduino projects. This initiative provides ATtiny chip configurations as upload board choices in the standard Arduino IDE. By following the instructions described in my previous article – Program an ATtiny Using an Arduino – your Arduino sketch can be uploaded as easily to an ATtiny board as it can be to an Arduino one.

More recently, the ATtiny has gained semi-official support given the variants posted by David Mellis on Github. Please note that this new firmware specification … Read the rest

How many microwaves have you thrown out because they get flaky after a few months? The thrift stores are full of these rejects. How many times have you wondered who designed the user interface for these things? What planet were they from? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a microwave that isn’t flaky and has a sensible interface?

Nathan did exactly that. He took a broken microwave and put in his own smarts via a Raspberry PI. It has a beautiful control panel, accepts voice commands and provides voice synthesized feedback. It even scans a product bar code to fetch cooking instructions. It is so smart, that you don’t have to babysit the thing to stop it to stir. With the bar code powered instructions, it will stop at the right time, tell you to stir, and start up again to finish the cooking. He even did a tablet interface.

The key to a project like this is a microwave with an intact magnetron, which is the tube which does the cooking. As already mentioned, most of the time these tubes are fine. It is the sorry electronics that flake out. Take inspiration from this guy. You don’t have … Read the rest

]]>0Scott Danielshttp://provideyourown.comhttp://provideyourown.com/?p=23202013-07-22T12:43:34Z2013-07-22T12:43:34ZWhile many universities have been offering some of their courses online for a few years now, none have offered actual degrees (aside from dubious “professional” colleges). Georgia Tech is first to have taken the leap. In collaboration with Udacity (which I have written about before), they are offering an accredited masters of computer science degree for $7,000.

Of particular interest is the fact that the actual courses are free. It is only the degree that costs money. This is nevertheless good news. There are a number of positive things to note:

An actual college degree can be obtained online from home without having to move and live near or on a campus.

The cost is much less than tuition for the same degree is normally; not to mention the considerable savings in living expenses.

The actual education is free for everyone in the world.

The degree is obtained via proctored exams offered at 4000 Pearson locations around the country.

That last item also points to another positive trend – certification by exam. Currently, the primary value of a college degree has nothing to do with education. Its main value is the piece of paper that opens doors into the world … Read the rest

]]>0Scott Danielshttp://provideyourown.comhttp://provideyourown.com/?p=23152013-07-13T04:16:42Z2013-07-15T10:57:54ZThere is a new two-part coating that will make anything waterproof. Called Ultra-Ever Dry, it is nano-technology based and works wonders. Watch the video below and be amazed:

The only problem with this product is it is far too expensive to be practical and only comes in large industrial quantities.

There is now good news. Rust-oleum has brought out a similar product called NeverWet. You can buy it at Home Depot for only $20 for 18 oz. It is still pricey, but practical for many things. Imagine boots that cannot get wet or even muddy. This product is definitely not your father’s Scotch-guard. I just hope there isn’t a patent war, putting this technology out of reach for us regular folks.

If you use this product, please share the applications you find for it in the comments.… Read the rest

]]>0Scott Danielshttp://provideyourown.comhttp://provideyourown.com/?p=23092013-07-13T03:00:12Z2013-07-13T03:00:12ZHere at ProvideYourOwn, we believe one of the most important things you can do for yourself and your children is to teach them at home. If you need yet another reason to do so, take a moment to watch this telling interview with Michio Kaku on how children’s intellect and desire to learn are crushed by the schools:

Of course, homeschooling is not a panacea if it duplicates the public school model. Set your child free – let him or her direct their own learning. That is what children are designed to do, and it makes your job as a mom or dad that much easier.

It is worthwhile to experience it at least once. You might even want to add it to your . For city folks, you may be wondering what is this big deal about hay? Hay is like the stuff we find in small bales in October right?

Like most things in life, there is a lot more to hay than first realized. When you are done reading this article, you will have incorporated some key knowledge of country living and keeping animals. It is hoped you will be able to vicariously enjoy the process to some extent as well.

What is Hay?

Hay is dried grass or possibly other green plants. It is not straw. While straw is a dried plant, it is made from the stems of cereal grasses such as wheat or oats after the grain has been harvested. By harvest-time, the stems are turning brown and have almost zero nutritional value. Straw is good for bedding animals. It is worthless for food.

Grass on the other hand is excellent food for grazing animals. It is even appreciated … Read the rest

Here at Provide Your Own, we are a big fan of LED lighting. Recent research has raised the alarm that LED lighting can cause retina damage. Is there any truth to this assertion? Can LEDs really be bad for your eyes, even causing blindness?

Fortunately for LED lovers, the answer is a resounding NO. When the facts are examined, if LEDs are bad for your eyes, then sunlight is at least ten times worse. Let’s first look at the basis for the assertion.

The Research Study

The study found that LED radiation caused significant damage to human retinal pigment epithelial cells in vitro.

Translated,

We irradiated naked retinal cells with intense light from LEDs in a petri dish and they didn’t do so well.

Keep in mind that damage would be done with any high intensity light. Have you stared into the sun lately? How about staring into lasers or high intensity LED flashlights? Think you might have some retina damage?

This research has not been peer reviewed, but is simply an account given by Dr Celia Sánchez Ramos. This fact does not invalid the research, but shows that we have absolutely no … Read the rest

Here at Provide Your Own, we love LED lighting. We also believe the best use of LED lighting is by making your own custom fixtures rather than going out to buy a manufactured light bulb.

An Italian company has the same idea. They have a product where you make your own LED desklamp from a pizza box. In the great spirit of open source, they even provide downloadable plans for cutting and folding your own.

Their version of the lamp uses only a 4″ LED strip for illumination. That comes out to about 60 lumens or the output of a 4 watt bulb. We recommend using at least a 12″ strip (cut into two 6″ pieces), which would provide about 180 lumens or 12 watts equivalent.

For your convenience, we offer a complete kit (no soldering required) for only $24.95 (over 30% saving over buying the parts separately).

You don’t have to be limited to cardboard either. It is simple to repurpose an … Read the rest

]]>0Scott Danielshttp://provideyourown.comhttp://provideyourown.com/?p=22232013-04-25T15:37:39Z2013-04-26T15:30:41ZEthernet (your computer network) only uses 2 pairs of wires. Cat5 cable provides 4 pairs, leaving 2 pairs leftover. You can use those two extra pairs to transmit power (in small amounts) to power remote equipment such as another router, switch or a bridge.

This additional capability is not provided by default. This article provides clear instruction on setting up your own Power Over Ethernet (PoE) network, including making custom adapters for injecting & extracting the power.… Read the rest

My sister in-law has taken to washing her dishes by hand because her dishwasher no longer gets them clean. Millions of other Americans have had the same problem. Many have vainly replaced their dishwashers with new ones only to face the same problem. The problem is not your dishwasher. It is your dish-washing detergent. It has changed. It is not the same product it used to be. A vital ingredient is missing.

While you may have noticed the effects of this missing ingredient in your dishes, you may not be aware of the same problem with your clothes. That is because this vital ingredient was taken out of laundry detergents over twenty years ago. That is so long ago, that most of us just think clothes are supposed to be grungy after a few washings. I am old enough to remember clothes staying clean, but didn’t understand why they didn’t any more until recently.

The Missing Ingredient

The magical ingredient that is no longer present in commercial detergents is tri-sodium phosphate or TSP as it is commonly known. This natural ingredient is made from phosphate deposits primarily found in Florida.

Circuit simulation is a great way to design and debug a circuit without spending all the time to prototype it. One problem in the past was the difficulty in setting up the simulation – picking models, etc.

A new simulator called PartSim changes all that. It is online, free, and drop-dead simple to use. It even links to Digikey parts and has some vendor parts available as well. It also has a nice schematic capture and even does diagramming.

Sometimes you have a sapling or other type of woody perennial coming up where it is not wanted. Getting rid of them presents a problem because if you cut them down, they will just grow back again.

I have a few areas on my place where I haven’t been able to mow for a few years, and I haven’t known what to do because of this very problem. Short of tethering goats on the spot all summer, I found another means to getting rid of these perennial weeds.

Conspiracies abound – there is no doubt about it. The media propaganda delights in lampooning anyone who believes that men would conspire together to further their interest (at least men in government; everyone else is fair game). While I am very skeptical of anything coming from either the mainstream media, the pharma industry or government agencies, I don’t throw everything out either. Two examples come to mind – free energy inventions (including 100+ mpg carburetors) and the Apollo moon landing.

In the case of free energy inventions, when they clearly violate the known laws of physics, they must be viewed very skeptically. It doesn’t matter who believes in them, what fantastic story is told about how the auto manufacturers strong-armed them out of business (or the oil companies), or how realistic it appears, it is very, very, very likely to be a hoax. Human gullibility knows no bounds, nor does human ingenuity to fool and exploit it.

Houdini spent years debunking séances. James Randi does the same with charlatans today. By all means keep an open mind, but when something sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

In the case of the moon landing, just because the government … Read the rest

This fascinating video shows how lumber was harvested from giant redwood trees before the chainsaw.

Nowadays, some people get smug about how advanced we are. We might have some high-tech gadgets, but are we better for them, or worse? Looking at these fellows scaling a tree almost as fast as one can walk, and then to chop it down with an ax while suspended from its trunk is absolutely amazing.

Modern technology has not made us any better. In most cases, it simply removes the requirement of skill. Anyone can fell a tree with a chainsaw, but how many can fell in with a foot or two of precision as these guys could?

If we are to be more self-sufficient and less reliant on corporations and experts, we must learn new skills. Avoiding technology is not an advantage as some may think. What is important is not avoiding technology, but rather avoiding learning useful skills and relying on technology as a crutch.

We must be the master of technology, not its slave. Thoughts anyone?… Read the rest

Have you ever wondered how digital cameras detect faces? If you thought that computer vision was rocket science and too difficult, that notion is no longer true.

There is this wonderful open source library called OpenCV that runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android and now RaspberryPi. Sophisticated visual algorithms are no longer limited to only high performance desktop computers. Using either your smartphone or a RaspberryPi, you can embed image detection in everyday life.

To get started, download the software needed for your device. Here are some nice tutorials to get you up to speed on using it.

We are pleased to announce the grand opening of our online store. It is a store unlike any other – either online or brick and mortar. Reflecting the diversity of the ProvideYourOwn website, our goal is to provide the resources you may need in your quest to reclaim your life from big corporations, crummy products and boxed-in living.

Our initial offerings are just the beginning. In the weeks and months ahead, we plan to add even more resources to help you. Here is just a taste of what we currently offer as well as future solutions we have in mind:

LEDs & Lighting

Here at ProvideYourOwn, we think that LEDs are the greatest thing since sliced bread. We have written some already about their wonderfulness, and will continue to do so. While LEDs still excel as indicator lights, in the near future we will be seeing them lighting our homes, landscapes, providing festive decoration and even personal ornamentation.

As is so common with many consumer products these days, most LED products available are poorly designed; providing a woefully inadequate and sickly blueish light. This realm is one where you can provide your solution that is far superior.

Have you ever wondered what a far away place looks like, but can’t find the means to go see it? Now you can. Google (who is constantly releasing new stuff that no one ever knows about) is now adding Street View panoramas of the world’s wonder spots.

This blog post from Google highlights their latest addition – the Grand Canyon. I gave it a spin, and it is pretty wild stuff – you can pick where to start and then hike down the trail, looking around as you go. It does get a little old after a while, so it might be nice to offer a side-by-side map view as well. Maybe they do, I just don’t know about it.

Google probably has lots of other scenic places photographed as well, but how you find them is up to you dear reader. Happy treasure hunting.… Read the rest

]]>0Scott Danielshttp://provideyourown.comhttp://provideyourown.com/?p=21102013-02-19T05:20:29Z2013-02-06T18:39:58ZAre you tired of having to throw away a perfectly good item just because some cheap plastic connector or other part broke? Like most of us, Matthias Wandel was just as frustrated, so he devised a novel way to repair these broken fittings.

The problem often faced when merely gluing the plastic piece back together, is that when under stress, any repair made will be weaker than the original one that broke in the first place. Matthias’s technique is to wrap the repair joint with nichrome wire that he melts into the plastic. His video shows how he does it.… Read the rest

]]>0Scott Danielshttp://provideyourown.comhttp://provideyourown.com/?p=20272013-01-28T23:04:57Z2013-01-30T23:00:10ZHave you ever wanted to rivet a project, but didn’t have a riveter, or the right sized rivets on hand? Another drawback to rivets is their look – on a lot of projects, the modern cheap sheet metal look just won’t do. This great article tells how to make your own heavy-duty rivets from ordinary nails that look great and work well for many projects.… Read the rest]]>0Scott Danielshttp://provideyourown.comhttp://provideyourown.com/?p=20162013-02-19T05:20:04Z2013-01-29T22:31:12Z

I thought this idea was really clever. Have you ever needed to keep some lotion on hand while you are out? Instead of dealing with a messy liquid container, these easy to make lotion bits are great to have on hand when you need them. They just melt in your hand.… Read the rest

]]>0Scott Danielshttp://provideyourown.comhttp://provideyourown.com/?p=20192013-02-19T05:19:40Z2013-01-28T17:56:56ZHere’s a simple how-to for making your own cell phone charging station. The author takes a flat plastic bottle and hacks it so that it hangs from a wall outlet. It has a nice appearance and is tidy.

I have been thinking about DIY charging docks for awhile now, and I think this one can be improved by fashioning an actual docking base from Sculpy. Then glue the charging plug into it, and you can then just drop your phone into the holder.

When I was a young man, I badly wanted to design and build my own stuff – even my own color television. One of my primary motives was a means to save money, of which I was sorely lacking. I was told by my elders that such thinking was incorrect. There was no way I could design my own television – that took a team of experts and that, in any case, I could not save any money in the process. I was better off to get a good paying job and just buy a television.

As I look back on that conversation, I have learned that the first statement was false, the second one true, and the third false. Let’s look at each assertion in more detail.

Building Your Own

In some ways I was ahead of my time. Designing and building a color television set was a daunting proposition back in the 1970s and 80s. Not impossible, but certainly difficult. Even with an electrical engineering degree the resources regarding color television design were slim to say the least. There was also no support from others for such a project when problems were encountered.

]]>0Scott Danielshttp://provideyourown.comhttp://provideyourown.com/?p=18802013-01-14T02:29:49Z2013-01-14T02:29:16ZThis great instructable – The Near-Perfect Tent provides exquisite detail on how to make your own camping tent.

Its author also gives a good summation of why we prefer to do things ourselves – to obtain something that meets our needs; something we can’t get from corporations. The reason for DIY is should not be to save money. Mass production and the division of labor is what gives us the abundance we have as Matt Ridley in his book posits.

What it doesn’t give us sometimes is something that meets our needs. Mass produced goods are only half-suitable for everyone and rarely ideally suited for anyone. Before you go camping again, be sure to check out this article first.… Read the rest

This article describes some wonderful new applications envisioned for LED lighting. While many of the links don’t work, it still contains some great photos of LEDs being used for decorating buildings, night-time gardens and more.

I can’t help commenting on the article’s main premise – that LEDs will lead to greater energy use than incandescent lights. This is absolutely true, but it is not a bad thing. As pointed out in their excellent book any time energy efficiencies are achieved, greater energy use is the result. The main reason for this effect is because of new applications found for the new technology. LEDs are a perfect example.

Some might be saying, “but we are in an energy crisis, don’t we need to conserve energy?” The answer is that the energy situation might be in a state of flux right now, we are in no way in a shortage. The US is on the verge of developing massive petroleum deposits which will make it a leading producer in a few years, and the price of solar is dropping to the point where powering our lights and appliances is now at the point that almost everyone can afford it – even the … Read the rest

I have been wanting a 10″ Android tablet, but they have always been too expensive. Sure, there have always been cheap Chinese knockoffs, but they have always been pretty junky affairs – until now.

My family recently bought me a . While this manufacturer does cut some corners, amazingly it didn’t cut the ones that count. It sports stereo speakers that sound better than the original Kindle Fire and has more memory as well. It even has a front facing camera and an HDMI output jack. Speed is decent and WiFi works just fine. It lacks the sensors of high end tablets and cell phones, but does have a microphone and accelerometer. It is perfect for viewing movies, PDF files, web browsing and Skype – typical tablet stuff. It also has USB input so you can easily attach a keyboard as well. You can also charge it via USB as well as using the supplied fast charger.

As for the downsides, there are remarkably few. Its ARM-based processor is only single core, and battery life is a tad less than the Kindle Fire, but decent. The biggest issue with this tablet is the lack of the Google Play store. Polaroid … Read the rest